These are the reasons I drink.
That’s what Alanis Morissette sang about. The reasons I drank had more to do with the dopamine, I suppose. Also because hangovers are easier to avoid than to enjoy. It was a way to have a daily routine in a socially isolating job. So I drank every evening for years and years.
It was easier to quit drinking and smoking than it was to quit eating sugar and carbs. That was when the cravings took over. The dopamine habit reinforcement with sugar for me was extreme. I’ve avoided added sugar consistently for about four months now. I escaped sugar last year for six or seven months, too. But then I caved around Halloween when our brokerage participated in an event doling out candy to kids. (I know! But I can’t preach everywhere all the time.) Anyway, eventually, ignoring the recurring urge to eat a cookie, candy, or pastry will itself become habituated.
One theory among the low-carb physicians and similarly minded health care people is that food is an addictive substance in some of its forms. Some believe food companies intentionally try to get people hooked on their products by sneakily making them irresistible. That’s why we can find ourselves struggling not to eat the whole bag of snack chips in one sitting, for instance. For which there’s the clever observation: “One is too many, a thousand isn’t enough.”
I’m not completely persuaded—and not about other addictions being so clinically straightforward. Yet, some recent research as to diet and neurochemistry strikes me as compelling, including the observation that people suffering from forms of mental illness often also suffer from forms of metabolic disorder and insulin disregulation.
In that spirit, here was a discussion between the Tennessee physician Ken Berry and the British psychologist Jen Unwin about food (sugar) addiction.
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Good morning! Happy Easter!
Happy Easter, everyone!